Forgotten Flame Under the Ice
Category: Lai Tam =Manse of Fire 5= Once called the Great Gateway to the New Northern Fronteir, the Manse that has become Forgotten Flame Under the Ice was a secret. It's origins were utterly benign; the Solar Queen Tenrae, of Whitewall, had hopes of expanding the influence, wealth and prosperity of her people. Of securing more and more for them. Her people were already very experienced miners; why then, not to expand their operations north? Her means had told her that far to the north of Whitewall lay a rich underground field of metals, ores, and jades; so close to the surface, in fact, that potentially it could be mined by mortals, and there were, miraculously, no Mountain Folk in the area. There was a catch. It was under the White Sea. So, she did what any reasonable Twilight would do. She dug an underground railroad tunnel, ten tracks wide, a thousand miles long. And at the end, on the conflux of one large fire-aspected Dragon Line and several lesser lines, she built a huge Manse, anchored deep into bed-rock. And she did it all with demons. Technically, she oughtn't have. At least, she should have told someone, and made sure the demons' work was incorporated into the Loom of Fate, but in her hurry to lay an indisputable claim (lest the Princes of Opal Spire to the north lay claim,) she 'forgot' to mention that. And so, it went unknown to all but three (plus the demons who made it, of course, but their minds were thorughly chained against revealing even the fact that they had participated on a project at the time, let alone the nature and location of the Manse.) Those three were Tenrae, her consort Den'Rahin, and their friend, the often-eccentric Chun Wane. The Manse wa intended to be the launching point of an entire population of underground workers, mining the rock under the white sea, trading with Whitewall. It might have worked, too, but then a little thing called the Usurpation hit. Tenrae and Den'Rahin lay dead, and Chun Wane knew he had to move quickly. He hid everything of value he could still lay his hands upon; his personal pistols, the first revolvers forged in creation, Lawgiver & Order, and his gunbelt, he hid in a cache far to the south-east, and began hiding things elsewhere. In the end, he hid Tenrae's prized train, Whitewall and Wallport #1, in the Great Gateway to the New Northern Frontier, and then hurried out to meet his end on the electric railcar that could carry him south, and from there, confront the Sidereals. There, everything lay, forgotten, disused, cold. And it got colder, as the Wyld moved south, the Elemental Pole of Air retreated closer to Creation. Eventually, it was buried under the Great Ice, and the geomancy changed, although it's aspect did not. Now recieving powerful surges of air along once-trickling channels, the powerfully-built Manse's form and geomancy shifted. Towering arches of brass and bronze, inlaid with leaded stained glass frescoes and arched windows, now stare directly at ice which seems to glow eerily from beyond. The tunnels down and south, which should have been made, never have been, the stone which was to be dug now a slick sheet of nigh-invulnerable ice. The whole Manse is cold - freezing, even - every surface not made of brass, bronze, other metal, or glass frozen over. And yet, mortals inside (of which there have been precisely zero, ever) are perfectly comfortable within, even should they choose to walk about nude. The large rail-works which were built with the expectation of constructing and repairing trains, trams, and drilling machines, now dormant, remain awaiting someone to light their forges and put them to work. Libraries containing the sum knowledge of the mother of locomotion's expertise on all things to do with rails and rolling stock abutt against libraries containing knowledge on all things to do with mining and subterrainian existance. All of this is possible by the hearthstone furnace. In the center of the nigh-citylike depot, was a mammoth, lit flame, a torch which powered the city, channeling and controlling the essence of the city. As the ice crept in, this flame's fundamental nature was affected, though not altered - the flame froze solid, and now appears to be a hovering spire of blue stained glass, casting a yellow light from inside through the whole manse. Though it's aesthetics changed radically, it remains fundamentally riding essence of fire, a true paradox. =Powers= *One-Point Powers **Comfort Zone ***No matter how cold a thermometer may say it is, no-one inside the Manse is at risk from the cold. Industry may take place here, the cold failing to interact with heat - the icy insides of furnaces which are lit fail to melt, the fire fails to gutter from the cold. *Two-Point Powers **Archive ***The Manse has extensive libraries on a great many subjects relating to it's original use. They are as follows. ****Craft (Fire's) specialty on processing metal and other things brought up from the depths. ****Craft (Fire's) specialty on the construction and maintenance of trains, with a strong emphasis on the operation of electrically-powered trains that were expected to traverse underground tunnels. ****Craft (Air's) specialty on electrical works and how to produce electricity that works with mundane systems by magical means. Craft (Earth's) specialty on cutting through and mining in rock. Craft (Wood's) specialty on underground agriculture. *Three-Point Powers **Workshop Manse (Craft Fire) ***The Great Gateway was intended to be a starting point at first, and then a huge depot, with rail traffic taking men and goods to and from Whitewall and vast, underground caverns, mines, and eventually, cities. This nessessated a large number of foundries and workshops. Though the complexity of the Manse, the speed of it's construction, and it's construction by demons precluded making it an actual Atlier or Factory-Cathedral Manse, a Workshop Manse built to house and manage hundreds of depot workers and allow them to work on rolling stock and digging stock, as well as simultainously housing ore processors to prepare metal for transshipment, leaves the Manse with a lot of space for people to work in, and virtually all the first-age tools they could hope for! *Four-Point Powers **Outside Fade ***Built by demons, the Forgotten Flame Under the Ice is Outside Fate. The eyes of heaven do not see it, they do not see what goes on it's dome, and they do not percieve the location of objects or persons within. =Hearthstone= The huge furnace that produces the Frozen Flame produced a Hearthstone, a very significant one. It produced a stone called The Fire of Industry. This powerful hearthstone lends hard-working efficiency to any Crafting project which it's bearer participates in, even if he or she does not lead the effort. Burning with the unrelenting desire to do a good job, do it right the first time, and do it faster for less, the First of Industry ruthlessly eliminates waste from the project and wasteful people. The net effect is that the project sheds pork and self-serving managers, acomplishing work twice as fast (add one to any applicable multipliers on work acomplished in a given time, such as from Craftsman Needs No Tools,) and gets done properly, the first time, with far fewer resources expended (Reduce the Resources cost of the project by one dot.)